About Me

Dr. Clyde Winters, has taught in the Chicago Public Schools for 36 years. He has taught Education and Linguistic Courses at Saint Xavier University-Chicago. As a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools Dr. Winters wrote State Standards in the 1990's for the Chicago Public School system and Common Core State Standards for Social Studies. He also wrote the 6th Grade World History Lesson Plans used in the CPS in 2000.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Black Gods of the Maya

African Writing in Mayan Inscriptions

Today over 500,000 Mexicans live in Mexico. On the Gulf coast we find the Afro-Vercruzanos, who claim descent from African slaves and Cubans.

But 70,000 Blacks live in Costa Chica. These Negrocostachicanos claim they arrived in Mexico due to ship wrecks. They live in areas (especially mountains) where their is no history of slavery. They practice many African traditions.

The Negrocostachicanos may be our link to the Africans who lived in Mexico that date back to pre-Olmec times.

We usually talk about the Olmecs as representatives of Pre-Columbian Blacks. But there are also Blacks dating back to Mayan times. It was the Olmec who gave the Mayans writing. Here is a bi-lingual Mayan-Olmec text.You can read about this text .

In the Mayan Madrid Codex and Troano Codex for example, we see the Mayan gods Ekchuah, and gods L & M.Ekchuah was recognized by the Mayan as the god of traveling merchants due to the influence of Blacks in the Mayan world as merchants.

Ekchuah has affinity to the Olmec bird god. Ekchuah is often called the long nose god. The glyph associated with Ekchuah, numbers 45 and 46 above support this title.

The symbol for Ekchuah is made up of three signs. This symbol is made up of a circle at the opening of a horseshoe figure with two or three circles at the base of the symbol.

Figures 45 and 46 only have the two circles at the base of the symbol.

This reads from top to bottom:

ta

fa

gyo

This message is "Priest of the divinity--(they) exist in a unique state.

When the Ekchuah has three cirlces at the base it reads:

ta

fa

se

The text reads "A partisan of the march (who) satisfies (your) needs".

Xaman the North Star God, is associated with Ekchuah. Often Xaman is depicted with facial chracteristics common to the African type and the compound ear-rings, which were also popular in ancient Africa.

Above is another Mayan inscription relating to the Black merchants. Reading the inscriptions in the Mayan language left to right we have the following: